


tequila on a beach

by faerie_ground



Series: the tequila series [1]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Biker Erik, F/F, Heavy Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:13:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29288883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faerie_ground/pseuds/faerie_ground
Summary: Erik doesn’t know what makes him do it- maybe it’s the loneliness in the man’s eyes, crazed and wild. Maybe it’s the abnormally low pits his own heart has been in all day, on the anniversary of his dad’s car accident. Whatever it is, it makes Erik clear his throat. “Wanna go for a ride?” Erik asks.“God, yeah,” the man bursts out, grinning. Erik smiles back hesitantly in response.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr/Magda (X-Men), Irene Adler (X-Men)/Raven | Mystique
Series: the tequila series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2158035
Comments: 19
Kudos: 55





	tequila on a beach

**Author's Note:**

> tw for explicit mentions of murder, slight child abuse, ptsd and alcoholism. if i left anything out pls lmk in comments
> 
> this really wasnt supposed to be written but i went into a depressive spiral in four hours and churned this one out. sorry in advance lol
> 
> edit: forgot to say this but big thank to sam for the beta! sam ilu

i.

There are cork boards covering every inch of the wall. Red strings, photographs, conspiracy threads, everything. Raven takes it in, swallowing, noticing the picture in the middle.

It’s one of Charles, when he’d been in university. His final year- he'd just been done presenting his year- end project, his fringe a tumbled mess and a bright smile on his lips. Erik had taken the picture, Charles scurrying to his side once he’d been done and demanding to look at the image, his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth. He looks like how Raven had always imagined him to be.

“He wouldn’t want this,” she finally says, turning to look at Erik.

Erik- well, Erik looks like a disaster. He always does, these days- full grown beard, dark circles a black ring under his eyes, his lips cracked and dry. He’s twirling a pen between his fingers, staring at the red strings and photographs on the wall. He’s got a new scar on the corner of his jaw, a permanent furrow in his brow. He’s not looking at Raven.

Raven still remembers meeting him for the first time. Erik Lehnsherr had been a furnace of a man, all consuming and all the more gorgeous for it. Leather jackets and bike helmets had been his go-to accessories, his signals to the world to leave him be. Having a gigantic crush on him, introducing him and Charles, noticing the instant sparks that flew and refusing to talk to Charles for a month after that. She regrets it now, far more than Charles will ever know.

“We wouldn’t know what he wants now,” Erik says hoarsely. He rubs at his eyes. Raven knows, for sure, that he hasn’t slept in a week.

“No, we wouldn’t,” Raven says sharply. “But I’m fucking tired. I’m _tired,_ Erik.” 

In the mornings, Raven rolls over to place a kiss on Irene’s cheek, and then scrolls through her phone til her thumb lands on Charles’ contact. She presses call, and sits there to listen to Charles’ voice message rattling off. _Hi there, love! Now, wait- got you there, didn’t I? I’m away for the moment, but I’ll get back to you sharp-ish! If it’s Mom or Kurt, go fuck yourself._ Irene had caught her once, listening to it and re-listening to it again and again whilst sobbing into one hand. All she’d done was pull her back to bed, hugging her and kissing her cheek. 

“I’m not,” Erik says flatly. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt less tired in my life.” His eyes flick over to the picture of Charles, flinty-eyed and sharp. “I don’t think I’ll ever feel tired again.”

Raven scrubs a hand over her face. “Erik-”

“I’ll find him myself,” Erik says. His eyes drift again to the photograph of Charles. Young, carefree, and beautiful. He’d been so popular, all through high school and college and university. Everyone had loved him, everyone had coveted him, everyone had wanted to be him and be with him. Class president, valedictorian, dean’s list. Erik would come to Raven and complain, talk about how flirtatious Charles had been at the bar and god, Raven, it makes you feel so insecure, doesn’t it?

Of course it does. It always has. Being Charles’ stepsister is like being the stepsister of the fucking sun. Raven had just been completely unprepared for the sun blowing up, one day. 

“Give this up,” Raven says softly. She walks over to Erik, takes the pen from his slack fingers. “Erik. Give this up. Give _him_ up.” _This is killing you._

Erik looks at her for a brief, agonized moment. And then he shakes his head, and stands up, brushing the lint off his pants. “I’ll show you to the door,” he says.

ii.

Raven says she introduced Charles and Erik. That’s a bald-faced lie. 

It had been a party. A raucous, chaotic party at a frat house, booze and drugs stinking up the place like a damn bonfire. Erik had come with Raven only after she’d cajoled him to, and stayed for an approximate half hour before hightailing it out of there. He’s always fucking hated parties, the stench, the alcohol and the din getting to him. 

He had been about to mount the bike, the thump of music and conversation and uncomfortable cacophony in his ears, when there had been a cough. Erik had looked up, then. It had been a man, standing at the edge of the curb, a bottle held loosely in his hand. Not just any man, Erik thinks, taking in the wild chestnut curls and the bright blue eyes, the most beautiful man Erik had ever seen. He’s clad in a black vest and a full sleeved, white shirt, looking older than his years.

“Nice bike,” he calls out. His voice is smooth, English-accented and low. 

“Thanks,” Erik says in surprise, straightening up. The man’s eyes follow his every move, riveted. 

Erik doesn’t know what makes him do it- maybe it’s the loneliness in the man’s eyes, crazed and wild. Maybe it’s the abnormally low pits his own heart has been in all day, on the anniversary of his dad’s car accident. Whatever it is, it makes Erik clear his throat. “Wanna go for a ride?” Erik asks.

“God, yeah,” the man bursts out, grinning. Erik smiles back hesitantly in response.

The man rests his cheek on his back, as he drives the old thing down every single road in the city. They stop at the beach in the end, Erik dismounting the bike before both of them stretch out on the sand, the man’s shoes kicked off somewhere. The vest has come off, as has the leather jacket Erik has on. The man’s been talking to him about everything and nothing- the mating habits of armadillos, the positions of each star in the Milky Way, the annoying head of the physics department at Oxford.

“I’m Charles,” the man says suddenly, as the sun begins to rise. It must be 7 am, although Erik doesn’t feel as if he’s stayed up all night. “Charles Xavier.”

Erik blinks in surprise. “Raven Xavier’s brother. She’s been wanting to introduce me to her, and I quote, _brilliant ass of a brother._ I’m Erik,” he says as an afterthought.

Charles lets out a laugh, full-bellied and deep. It makes something in Erik’s gut flip over itself, a somersault. He turns on his side, watches Charles continue to laugh as if Erik’s just said the funniest thing he’d ever heard in his life. “That’s me,” he quips. “Brilliant ass.”

“I’ll take that into account,” Erik says, and then leans over to kiss Charles. It’s the best kiss he’s ever had in his life. Charles moves his lips like an expert, opening up and licking at the seam of Erik’s mouth. He tastes like lemon- lemon, and the faintest taste of tequila. It makes something in Erik’s gut stir. 

Seven in the fucking morning and he’s on the beach, kissing a man who’s just about the most handsome man he’s ever seen. There’s a first time for everything, after all.

“Make sure you do,” Charles says when they finally detach, bottom lip slick with spit. 

iii.

About a month after it happens, Erik goes on a two week long bender. He goes into bar after bar after bar, gets drunk on cheap whiskey and tequila, instigates so many bar fights he starts sporting a permanent black eye. At least three bars in town have him blacklisted. He doesn’t really remember it all. That had been the point of the alcohol, anyway.

On the fifteenth day, he wakes up to an apartment devoid of alcohol, Raven and his mother glaring daggers at him. They’d ganged up on him like the devil women they actually were, pouring all the booze down the sink and locking up the wine cabinet. The ensuing fight is the worst Erik has ever been through- he screams himself hoarse by the end of it, collapsing onto a chair and slamming his head onto his folded up arms. 

“You’re not the only one who lost Charles, you idiot!” Raven screams at some point. She’d been crying too, gasping tears that had turned her pale face blotchy. “He was my _brother!”_

“And he was the damn love of my life!” Erik had screamed back, and then Raven had tried to punch him before his mother had intervened by sitting both of them forcefully down and asking sweetly yet dangerously if they would like some tea.

“It’s not up for debate,” she says, when Erik opens his mouth to protest.

Of course Erik knows he hadn’t been the only one to lose Charles. Of course Erik knows he wasn’t the only one to have any right to grieve over Charles. But he’d known Charles best. He’d known every single detail to Charles, every laugh, every tear, every bit of his arrogance and condescension and brilliance and humility. Charles would hog all of Erik’s jackets and shirts, would tuck his feet under Erik’s thigh when it got cold, would kiss down Erik’s throat and over his collarbone when he felt like getting frisky, would pull him up and dance to the radio when the sun started setting, would slide up on his toes to kiss Erik’s forehead before he left for work. None of them would ever know the agony of losing someone like Erik lost Charles. The agony of holding him in his arms, begging him to blink to look at him to talk to scream to smile-

Charles had been looking up at the sky. His lips had been devoid of colour. His cheeks had been ashen white, marks of red-black-blue ringing his throat like a collar. He’d still looked like the most beautiful thing Erik had ever seen.

Exactly two weeks ago, Erik had gone digging in the drawers of Charles’ side of the bed, drunk off his ass on dollar store vodka. He’d found a tiny box with a ring in it full of sapphires. It must have been expensive. 

“Schatz,” his mother says, sitting down and squeezing Erik’s hand with her own, “we all just want to see you heal.”

In response, Erik sticks his hand in his pocket and pulls out the box. He takes out the ring, aware of the sudden, sharp silence in the kitchen, and puts it on his finger. Then he buries his head in his hands and starts to sob.

“Oh, Erik,” Edie Lehnsherr murmurs. Raven has started to cry again, silent tears that sound like puffs of air in the kitchen. “Oh, that sweet, sweet boy. Oh-” she pulls Erik into her arms and he goes willingly, the ring a tight weight on his finger. 

iv.

“I want to get married on a pavilion,” Charles says, and Erik starts laughing.

Charles pouts. _“Listen to me!”_ he yelps, shoving at Erik’s shoulder with his hand. His hair is falling into his eyes, sticking to the corner of his lips. Erik loves him, so much that he doesn’t think it's possible to hold this much love in his soul.

“I’m listening, I’m listening,” Erik says, grinning. Charles’ legs are slung over his lap, a bottle in his hands. He’s in one of Erik’s shirts, an exceptionally baggy one that’s big even on Erik, and therefore looks like a fucking blanket on him. The collar sags low, where Erik can see his own hickeys placed like a strategic mark of territory in the space between his collarbones. 

“I want a pavilion wedding,” Charles continues. He waves his hands in the air, expression distant. “Fairy lights. Small gathering- maybe, ten people. You can’t invite Azazel.”

Erik frowns. “Why not?”

“I don’t like him,” Charles shrugs. “And there will be a rainbow cake.”

“Because we’re not gay enough,” Erik says, and gets a foot to his face for the trouble. 

“Erik!” Charles says, laughing. “Come on! You’re not taking me seriously.”

“I _am_ taking you seriously,” Erik insists, pulling at Charles’ legs until he’s gasping and lying flat on his back on the sofa, hovering over him until their lips are a hair’s breadth apart. “Pavilion wedding,” he whispers, watching the pupils of Charles’ eyes dilate. His pulse races, a fluttering thing, and Erik swallows down a laugh, nosing down his throat. “Rainbow cake. Fairy lights. No Azazel.”

“Bang on the dollar,” Charles whispers back, beaming. He’s stunning, hair spread out beneath him like a spider web. “Best wedding in the _world!”_

“If you say so,” Erik teases, and then slides down the sofa, unbuttoning Charles’ jeans. 

A week later, Charles leaves the house with a kiss on Erik’s cheek and a fumbled grope at his ass. A week later, Charles disappears on the drive to the university, never even reaching the campus. A week and two days later, his body is found in the woods, strangulation marks around his neck courtesy of Sebastian Shaw. 

v.

The phone rings at five am in the morning. Moira wakes up with a grunt, and draws herself away from Sean’s arms to look at the caller.

“Whozzit,” Sean murmurs.

“Erik Lehnsherr,” Moira sighs. Of course it is.

“Of course it is,” Sean says, and lets out a deafening snore. Moira gives him a look of fond disgust, before picking the call up. 

“Lehnsherr,” Moira snaps, trying to get the sting of sleep from her eyes, “you better have a good fucking reason-”

“It’s Sebastian Shaw,” Erik barks down the line. “You know Shaw, don’t you?”

Moira sits up with a jerk, and ignores Sean opening his eyes in alarm. “How,” she gasps. “How-”

“I’m fucking killing him,” Erik snaps. There’s the rev of that damn bike in the background, loud and deafening. He sounds terrible, vocal chords scraped raw. The last Moira had seen of him, he’d spat on the front steps of the police station and told her he’d do her damn job himself. 

Well, he certainly had.

“Don’t,” Moira shouts. She jumps up, grabbing her shirt and yanking it on. Fuck this, she was _never_ letting Sean fuck her at night again. She’d gone to sleep in the nude. “Don’t, Lehnsherr, wait for backup-”

“Fuck your fucking backup,” Erik snaps. The line goes dead and Moira draws the phone away from her ear, staring at it with horror for a split second before jumping back into action. Sean sits up, the sleep completely gone from him. “Go back to sleep,” she pants, hopping into a pair of trousers as Sean stares at her. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing,” Sean says carefully. “Is it?” 

Moira hesitates. Sean is technically a civilian. So- and jesus fucking sweet christ- so is Erik. “It would seem like he’s found him,” Moira says carefully. “Look, just go back to sleep-”

“Moira,” Sean says, and the cadence of his voice shocks Moira out of her focus. “Charles was my friend, too.”

He’d been the one to find his body. Out in the woods, in a grove within a circle of trees, Charles’ eyes wide open and staring up into the sky. They had been a bright, luminescent blue in life, and they remained a bright luminescent blue in death. 

Sean had stumbled upon him and screamed, loud and horrible. That had been nothing compared to what Erik had done. They’d had to call in the paramedics at that point, Erik dragged away from Charles kicking and screaming. His eyes had been blown wide open with grief, tears streaking down his face as he’d screamed and cried and howled his throat raw. Moira had been the one to draw the sheet over Charles’ face, watching as he’d been loaded into the ambulance.

The funeral had been awful. Erik had been a walking corpse, everyone else pale and silent. Moira herself had been torn up with grief. Charles, sweet Charles who always brought Erik to everything, who’d told her that her brown hair was proof of outstanding genetics, who’d had his life cut short so brutally fast. The wake after that had come to an abrupt end when Erik had punched Charles’ stepbrother in the face 

“Fine,” Moira says, and then notices Sean typing away on his phone, and sighs. “The rest of the gang too, I gather.”

“Of course,” Sean says, and looks up. “He’s not alone.”

They reach too late, anyway. Moira bangs the door of the police car shut, right in front of the dilapidated warehouse where Erik had been said to be located. Erik’s on a bench, hunched over with his head in his hands, shoulders shaking. Raven and Irene are on either side of him, Raven rubbing his back while Irene whispers something in his ear.

Erik looks up as she approaches. His face is coated in tears and blood, his bottom lip bitten through. “I don’t regret it,” he says. “I don’t. He said Charles screamed for me, he said Charles d-d-died in fear. I don’t regret it.”

Moira swallows, nodding. She has no idea how Erik had managed to get hold of it, but on the way here her phone had pinged with an incoming email from him, containing encrypted video files of Shaw’s confessions to numerous two murders. Emma Frost and Charles Xavier. Both dead by strangulation, both socialites, both beautiful. Shaw, after all, had been a burgeoning serial killer. Charles and Emma had been his test runs, having committed no other crime than being on the superior end of the gene pool, looks wise. 

Moira swallows, and goes on her knees. “Erik,” she says softly. “I’m sorry.” And she is. Charles had been her friend, too. When the trail had gone cold, no one had regretted it more than her, no matter what Erik would like to think.

Erik doesn’t say anything. There’s a ring on his ring finger, sapphire encrusted and pretty. Moira doesn’t have to ask who it belongs to. 

She ends up ruling Sebastian Shaw’s death as an unfortunate car accident, the result of a car chase when the coppers had been tracking him down after he’d been charged with first degree murder of Emma Frost and Charles Xavier. There had barely been enough to id his body with, anyway.

vi.

“Oh, my darling boy,” Edie Lehnsherr sighs. Erik is twisting the ring around his finger, curled up on the armchair. She’d never wanted this for Erik. Who could want this for their child- the grief of losing their loved one? She remembers what it had been like, receiving the call about Jacob, rushing to the hospital and then screaming into her hands when the doctor had told her the news. 

Maybe the Lehnsherrs are cursed, she thinks.

Erik doesn’t say anything. His eyes are rather empty these days, of any light at all. He lives, sure, but he goes through the motions, stilted and haunted. It makes her heart ache with sympathy and with empathy.

And that poor, poor boy. Charles had been so bright. So young, so polite, so smart- Edie still has that diamond necklace he’d gifted her rather shyly for her birthday. She has it kept carefully now, in her airtight drawer. 

“Killing Shaw,” she finally says. “Did it bring you peace?”

“Peace was never an option, Mama,” Erik says. The ring on his finger catches the light and turns into blue flame. 

vii.

Charles jumps onto the kitchen table, swinging his legs. He’s in his own sweatshirt, thank the heavens for that, yellow duck patterned boxers. There’s a butterfly clip pushing his hair back. He just needs to get a haircut, but of course he never does. “I’m hungry,” he says, pouting. “Won’t you feed me, Erik?”

“No,” Erik says, but he’s smiling. He takes in his fill- Charles’ hair is curling around his ears, his nose dotted with freckles, his eyes bright in the kitchen. He’s grinning, dimples wide and lips full. It makes something in Erik’s heart burst into agony. “I miss you,” he says suddenly. 

“Why?” Charles asks, innocuous. He swings his legs again, propped up on his palms flat against the kitchen table. “I’m right here.”

“No,” Erik chokes. His eyes are streaming, his face full of tears. “No, my darling. You left me.”

Charles’ face crumples. “I didn’t want to,” he whispers. “Erik. I didn’t want to.” He holds his arms out and Erik staggers into them, burying his head in the crook of Charles’ neck. Charles smells like lemon. Always, always of lemon. 

“Are you happy?” Erik breathes. “Wherever you are?”

Charles doesn’t reply.

Erik wakes up in the morning, the sunlight beating down relentlessly on his back, his face twisted in grief. 

viii.

“Why did Mom split up with you?” Pietro asks him one day. He tells everyone to call him by Peter, because it’s the _hip, cool_ thing. Erik feels like whacking him around the head every time he does so. Wanda certainly does, ignoring Pietro’s shrieks of protests.

Why, indeed. Magda had slapped the papers on his desk one day, and told him that she couldn’t compete with a ghost. “I’ve tried,” she snaps. “For his sake, more than yours. For the sake of our children. And I can’t. Get it together, Erik. Let him rest.”

Erik has been getting it together. For twenty years, if anyone’s keeping count. Everyone around him certainly has- Raven, who’d moved to Canada soon after with Irene, his mother, even his fucking therapist. It’s not his fault if he can’t forget blue eyes, strangulation marks and wild, brown curls. 

“We just didn’t work, Pietro,” Erik finally says. “Are you going to eat your vegetables?”

A day later, he decides to take both Pietro and Wanda to the beach. It’s the first time he’s ever been, since the day they found the body. Pietro’s whooping, nagging him to play volleyball before giving up and joining a bunch of kids who invite him over, and Wanda’s in a rather far too skimpy bathing suit, sunbathing on a spot far from both Erik and Pietro. “You embarrass me, Papa,” she’d said flatly, when Erik had asked why.

“They’re amazing, darling,” Charles says from beside him. Erik turns, and there he is- as beautiful as the day Erik had first met him. He’s in one of Erik’s sweatshirts again, worn out jeans. God, did he ever stop stealing those things? 

“I know,” Erik says, smiling softly. He reaches his hand over, and Charles places his hand on top. He’s wearing the sapphire encrusted ring on his finger- the ring Erik now wears in a necklace around his neck. 

“Move on, Erik,” Charles says. His mouth is twisted in a smile, but his eyes are overbright with tears. He looks twenty five. He will always look twenty five, while Erik himself approaches the wrong end of forty. “It’s been years.”

“I can’t,” Erik says. He turns in front. Pietro has just been smacked on the face with a volleyball. He jumps up again, flipping the opponent off before turning to grin brightly at Erik. “I can’t, schatz.”

A shadow falls over him, then. “Who were you talking to?” Wanda asks, and Erik looks up. There’s no one beside him. He’s all alone.

“No one,” Erik says briefly. “Sit down, darling. What’s this your mother’s telling me about your history test?”

“Mama doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Wanda fumes, sitting back down again.

Magda picks Pietro and Wanda up, eyes lighting up with understanding when Erik tells her he’ll stay a little while longer. He sits in front of the waves, lies down on his back and fingers the ring sitting on his collarbone. He stays there til the sun begins to rise, Charles a comforting weight beside him with his head resting on his shoulder. 

“Do you still love me?” Erik asks, and then feels stupid for asking that to a ghost.

“Of course, my love,” Charles says. He turns his head and presses a kiss to Erik’s shoulder. “Til the end of my days. And then for a little while after.” 

They stay there until the sun sits comfortably in the sky. “Can we go home?” Charles asks then, and Erik nods.

He bikes all the way home, for the first time in twenty years, that old thing he’d first taken Charles in all those years ago. Charles’ arms are a vice grip around his waist, his cheek a comforting weight between his shoulder blades. 

Erik takes the long way home, and he continues to ride into the rising hours of the morning, Charles rested against his back like he always used to. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> erik and magda never do quite manage to make it work. when erik dies at the ripe old age of sixty-five, charles is waiting in a pavilion for him, fairy lights creating a halo around his head. 
> 
> leave a comment + kudos if you liked this! <3 talk to me on twitter (ROBBIETURNCR) or tumblr (himbomcavoy)


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